Obama Quietly Signs The "Countering Disinformation And Propaganda Act" Into Law

Obama Quietly Signs The
"Countering Disinformation And Propaganda Act" Into Law

Late on Friday, with the US population
embracing the upcoming holidays and oblivious of most news emerging from the
administration,Obama quietly signed into
law the 2017National
Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which authorizes $611 billion for the military
in 2017.

Today, I
have signed into law S. 2943, the “National Defense Authorization Act for
Fiscal Year 2017.” This Act authorizes fiscal year 2017 appropriations
principally for the Department of Defense and for Department of Energy national
security programs, provides vital benefits for military personnel and their
families, and includes authorities to facilitate ongoing operations around the
globe. It continues many critical authorizations necessary to ensure that we
are able to sustain our momentum in countering the threat posed by the Islamic
State of Iraq and the Levant and to reassure our European allies, as well as
many new authorizations that, among other things, provide the Departments of
Defense and Energy more flexibility in countering cyber-attacks and our
adversaries’ use of unmanned aerial vehicles."

Much of the balance of Obama's statement
blamed the GOP for Guantanamo's continued operation and warned that
"unless the Congress changes course, it will be judged harshly by
history," Obama said. Obama also said Congress failed to use the bill to
reduce wasteful overhead (like perhaps massive F-35 cost overruns?) or
modernize military health care, which he said would exacerbate budget pressures
facing the military in the years ahead.

But while the passage of the NDAA - and
the funding of the US military - was hardly a surprise, the biggest news is
what was buried deep inside the provisions of the Defense Authortization Act.

Recall that aswe reported in early June,"a bill to implement the
U.S.’ very ownde factoMinistry of Truth had been quietly introduced
in Congress. As with any legislation attempting to dodge the
public spotlight the Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act of
2016 marks a further curtailment of press freedom and another avenue to
stultify avenues of accurate information. Introduced by Congressmen Adam
Kinzinger and Ted Lieu, H.R. 5181 seeks a “whole-government approach without
the bureaucratic restrictions” to counter “foreign disinformation and
manipulation,” which they believe threaten the world’s “security and
stability.”

Also called the Countering Information Warfare
Act of 2016 (S. 2692), when introduced in March by Sen. Rob Portman, the
legislation represents a dramatic return to Cold War-era government propaganda
battles.“These countries spend vast sums of money
on advanced broadcast and digital media capabilities, targeted campaigns,
funding of foreign political movements, and other efforts to influence key
audiences and populations,” Portman explained, adding that while the U.S.
spends a relatively small amount on its Voice of America, the Kremlin provides
enormous funding for its news organization, RT.

“Surprisingly,” Portman continued, “there
is currently no single U.S. governmental agency or department charged with the
national level development, integration and synchronization of
whole-of-government strategies to counter foreign propaganda and
disinformation.”

Long before the
"fake news" meme became a daily topic of extensive conversation on
such discredited mainstream portals as CNN and WaPo, H.R. 5181 would task the
Secretary of State with coordinating the Secretary of Defense, the Director of
National Intelligence, and the Broadcasting Board of Governors to “establish a
Center for Information Analysis and Response,” which will pinpoint sources of
disinformation, analyze data, and — in true dystopic manner — ‘develop and
disseminate’ “fact-based narratives” to
counter effrontery propaganda.

In short, long before "fake
news" became a major media topic, the US government was already planning
its legally-backed crackdown on anything it would eventually label "fake
news."

And now,
following Friday's Obama signing of the NDAA on Friday evening,the Countering Disinformation
and Propaganda Actis
now law.

* * *

Here is thefull statementissued by thegenerously fundedSenator Rob Portman (R- Ohio) on the
singing into law of a bill that further chips away at press liberties in the
US, and which sets the stage for future witch hunts and website shutdowns,
purely as a result of an accusation that any one media outlet or site is
considered as a source of "disinformation and propaganda" and is shut
down by the government.

U.S. Senators
Rob Portman (R-OH) and Chris Murphy (D-CT) today announced that theirCountering Disinformation and
Propaganda Act –legislation designed to help
American allies counter foreign government propaganda from Russia, China, and
other nations–has
been signed into law as part of the FY 2017 National Defense Authorization Act
(NDAA) Conference Report. The bipartisan bill, which wasintroducedby Senators Portman and Murphy in
March, will improve the ability of the United States to counter foreign
propaganda and disinformation from our enemies by establishing an interagency
center housed at the State Department to coordinate and synchronize
counter-propaganda efforts throughout the U.S. government. To support these efforts,
the bill also creates a grant program for NGOs, think tanks, civil society and
other experts outside government who are engaged in counter-propaganda related
work. This will better leverage existing expertise and empower our allies
overseas to defend themselves from foreign manipulation. It will also help
foster a free and vibrant press and civil society overseas, which is critical
to ensuring our allies have access to truthful information and inoculating
people against foreign propaganda campaigns.

“Our enemies are using foreign
propaganda and disinformation against us and our allies, and so far
the U.S. government has been asleep at the wheel,” Portman said. “But today,
the United States has taken a critical step towards confronting the extensive,
and destabilizing, foreign propaganda and disinformation operations being waged
against us by our enemies overseas.With this bill now law, we are finally
signaling that enough is enough; the United States will no longer sit on the
sidelines. We are going to confront this threat head-on. I am confident that,
with the help of this bipartisan bill, the disinformation and propaganda used
against us, our allies, and our interests will fail.”

“The use of propaganda to
undermine democracy has hit a new low.But now
we are finally in a position to confront this threat head on and get out the
truth. By building up independent, objective journalism in places like eastern
Europe, we can start to fight back by exposing these fake narratives and
empowering local communities to protect themselves,” said Murphy. “I’m proud
that our bill was signed into law, and I look forward to working with Senator
Portman to make sure these tools and new resources are effectively used to get
out the truth.”

NOTE:The bipartisanCountering Disinformation and
Propaganda Actis organized around two main priorities to
help achieve the goal of combatting the constantly evolving threat of foreign
disinformation from our enemies:

oThe first priority is developing a
whole-of-government strategy for countering THE foreign propaganda and
disinformation being waged against us and our allies by our enemies. The bill would increase the authority,
resources, and mandate of the Global Engagement Center to include state actors
like Russia and China as well as non-state actors. The Center will be led by
the State Department, but with the active senior level participation of the
Department of Defense, USAID, the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the
Intelligence Community, and other relevant agencies. The Center will develop,
integrate, and synchronize whole-of-government initiatives to expose and
counter foreign disinformation operations by our enemies and proactively
advance fact-based narratives that support U.S. allies and interests.

o

oSecond, the legislation seeks to leverage
expertise from outside government to create more adaptive and responsive U.S.
strategy options. The legislation establishes a fund to help train local
journalists and provide grants and contracts to NGOs, civil society organizations,
think tanks, private sector companies, media organizations, and other experts
outside the U.S. government with experience in identifying and analyzing the
latest trends in foreign government disinformation techniques. This fund will
complement and support the Center’s role by integrating capabilities and
expertise available outside the U.S. government into the strategy-making
process. It will also empower a decentralized network of private sector experts
and integrate their expertise into the strategy-making process.

* * *

And so, with thelikes of WaPo having
already primed the general publicto
equate "Russian Propaganda" with "fake news" (despite
admittingafter the fact their own
report was essentially "fake"), while the US media has
indoctrinated the public to assume that any information which is not in
compliance with the official government narrative, or dares to criticize the
establishment, is also "fake news" and thus falls under the
"Russian propaganda" umbrella, the scene is now set for the US
government tolegallycrack down on every media outlet that
the government deems to be "foreign propaganda."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How Facebook Outs Sex Workers
By Kashmir Hill Yesterday 2:20pm
Leila has two identities, but Facebook is only supposed
to know about one of them.
Leila is a sex worker. She goes to great lengths to keep
separate identities for ordinary life and for sex work, to avoid stigma,
arrest, professional blowback, or clients who might be stalkers (or worse).
Her “real identity”—the public one, who lives in
California, uses an academic email address, and posts about politics—joined
Facebook in 2011. Her sex-work identity is not on the social network at all;
for it, she uses a different email address, a different phone number, and a
different name. Yet earlier this year, looking at Facebook’s “People You May
Know” recommendations, Leila (a name I’m using using in place of either of the
names she uses) was shocked to see some of her regular sex-work clients.
Despite the fact that she’d only given Facebook
information from her vanilla identity, the company had somehow discerned her
real-world con…

The 15 Most Influential Websites of All TimeAlex Fitzpatrick,Lisa Eadicicco,Matt Peckham Updated:
Oct 20, 2017 10:55 AM ET | Originally published: Oct 18, 2017 The
web, or "world wide web" as we used to say, turns 27 years old on
December 20. On that date, nearly three decades ago, British engineer and
scientist Tim Berners-Lee launched the world's first website, running on a NeXT
computer at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear
Research) in Switzerland.

The website wasn't much at the time, just a few sentences
organized into topic areas that laid out the arguments for the concept. But it
established vital first principles still essential to the web as it exists
today: the notion of hyperlinks that reimagined documents (and eventually any
form of media) as nonlinear texts, and the ability for anyone, anywhere in the
world, to peruse that content by way of a browser: a piece of software that
cohered to universal formatting standards. It's been a wild ride since…

British supermarket offers 'finger vein' payment in
worldwide first
By Katie Morley, consumer affairs editor 20 SEPTEMBER
2017 • 1:04AM
A UK supermarket has become the first in the world to let
shoppers pay for groceries using just the veins in their fingertips.
Customers at the Costcutter store, at Brunel University
in London, can now pay using their unique vein pattern to identify themselves.
The firm behind the technology, Sthaler, has said it is
in "serious talks" with other major UK supermarkets to adopt hi-tech
finger vein scanners at pay points across thousands of stores.
It works by using infrared to scan people's finger veins
and then links this unique biometric map to their bank cards. Customers’ bank
details are then stored with payment provider Worldpay, in the same way you can
store your card details when shopping online. Shoppers can then turn up to the
supermarket with nothing on them but their own hands and use it to make
payments in just three …